Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/251

 one, than I hurried to another with restless inquietude. Tread on without selection or discrimination. It was a long time before [ learned to compare, to weigh, and to judge. It happened to me as it has happened to mankind in general. In my anxiety to know, I was ready to take every thing on trust; and I did not stop to distinguish between what. was fact, and what was fiction. But while I allowed an abundance of folly and falsehood to be palmed upon me under the sober disguise of truth, I had but little taste for writers professedly imaginative. I could not understand why they wrote, or what they aimed at. I despised the poets; but voyages, travels, histories and narratives of every sort, I devoured with undistinguishing voracity. Time and reflection have since enabled me to extract something of truth and philosophy from these chaotic acquisitions.

For a while, my studies had much the same stimulating, and exciting effect with my former activity. They raised my spirits, and enabled me to bear up under the discouraging advices which I received from America. But they palled at last; — and when my agent returned with the disastrous information, that all his searches had been unavailing, I found no support under the load of grief that overwhelmed me.

From such information as my agent had been able to obtain, it appeared that Mrs Montgomery, Cassy's mistress, had become security to a large amount for that brother of hers, by whose advice and agency she managed her affairs. That brother was a planter; and among the American planters, the passion for gambling is next to universal, — for it is one of the few excitements by which they are able to relieve the listless and wearisome indolence of their useless lives. Mrs Montgomery's brother was a gambler, and an unsuccessful one. Having ruined himself, he began to prey upon his sister. Besides embezzling all such money of hers as he could lay his hands upon, — and as he had the entire management of her affairs, her income was much at his disposal, — he induced her, under various pretences, to put her name to bonds and notes to a large amount. On these notes and bonds suits were commenced; but this, her brother, who strove to defer the disclosure of his villanies as